With my voice will I call to Jehovah, and he will answer me from the hill of his holiness. Selah.
David wrote this psalm while running for his life from his own son Absalom. Here he cries out, and God hears him. Where the answer comes from matters as much as the answer itself.
Trouble he had brought on himself
This cry comes out of one particular kind of trouble. David had not earned it by innocence. He had earned it by his own sin.
Sometimes a child of God suffers trials and sorrows he has brought on himself. In His holy government God has placed His hand upon him, and he has to reap what he has sown. This is the hardest test of all. When David wrote Psalm 3 he was in this plight, for he was fleeing from Absalom his son. That was the darkest hour of his whole life, because every detail of it paid him back for what he had done.
Why he could still cry with confidence
A person under God's discipline can still pray with confidence. But something has to happen first. One writer traces David's freedom here back to an earlier psalm of confession.
We would say that David could never have written Psalm 3 as he did, while fleeing from Absalom, if he had not first written Psalm 51. That psalm poured out his heart in confession of his great sin. But he judged himself and admitted his sin. God then brought him back into communion. So he could face the trouble God's government brought on him, with confidence in Him.
Being heard, not just crying out
Anyone in trouble can cry out. What matters is what came back.
In the third psalm we have the enemies, the surroundings; and the One who is here for God is the blessed Lord Himself. So it is written, "I cried, and He heard." That is the great point with us. It is not merely crying because of sorrows and difficulties here, but it is having the sense in our souls that He hears.
Being heard and being rescued are not the same thing. David's own story shows the gap between them.
Deliverance did not come at once. It did not, as we know. But David knew in his soul that the Lord had heard his cry. So he could wait calmly and expect His help in His own time and way… Whatever the outward circumstances, it is enough for the soul to be sure that God has bent down His ear and heard its cry.
The place the answer comes from
David does not just say he got an answer. He names the place it came from. God's chosen King reigns on the holy hill of Zion, and that is where the answer comes from.
Where does He hear me from? "Out of His holy hill." He is there. We are here with all our small concerns, our disappointments, our stumbles, our failures. And we find that He is there, at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty on high, God's anointed King on His holy hill of Zion. In the psalm He says that is where He hears from — from His holy hill. Knowing that He hears us from His holy hill gives real rest. It is what makes us able to face ten thousand people drawn up against us without fear.
The word "holy" is not decoration. It describes the character of the One answering, and it explains the pause marked at the verse's end.
His prayer in verse 4 was the prayer of faith, with simple confidence that God would hear. And God did hear "from His holy hill" — that is, from the place of high exaltation, where holiness stays clean of the emptiness of human thought. Because God is holy, He loves what is good and hates evil… No wonder the word says "Selah" — pause and consider.
(Note: the older translation these writers use reads "he heard me"; the ESV renders it "he answered me.")
What changes after the answer
The answer did not move the threat. It moved the man.
Prayer does not always change our circumstances. It changes us. Instead of being distressed and distracted we are kept in peace and sustained in the trial (Phil. 4:6-7). We see this again and again in the psalmist's own experience. In the middle of his trials he cries to the Lord and knows he is heard. The trials go on as before, yet God keeps him in peace. He sleeps, and God sustains him. He wakes to the full weight of the trial, but can face it without fear.
A larger voice in the words
Commentators also read this psalm beyond David's own crisis. One writer sees in it a prophetic picture of Christ:
Read this way, this Psalm is full of profit. Yet it carries a higher meaning still. It is a prophetic picture of what the Holy One of God went through. Enemies who wanted His life closed in around Him, and He trusted God as One near at hand both to justify and to deliver.
Summary
- Reaping. David's trouble was the harvest of his own sin — the hardest test of all, and still no barrier to prayer.
- Restored. Confession came first. A conscience already judged let him pray with confidence under discipline.
- Heard. The turning point is not the volume of the cry but the settled sense in the soul that God has heard it.
- From Zion. The answer comes from the holy hill, where God's anointed King reigns. Knowing where it comes from takes away the fear of ten thousand enemies.
- Rest. Prayer changes the person before it changes the circumstances. David sleeps, wakes, and faces the same threat unafraid. Selah — pause and consider.